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23 February 2010

Extreme Pride

I can't extol enough my little girl's recent accomplishments. She is not a shy little wallflower, that child, but at times, she can be really obstinate. I mean, strong willed. Have known that from the get go, and love that she doesn't take things at face value. But I can't lie...things go much better for us when she is BEHIND the thing that we want her to do. i.e. often time she whines about practicing the piano (she's been in piano for 3 years), but when we ask her if she'd like to stop piano lessons, she most certainly does not. She LOVES music and singing and playing the piano.

So last weekend her studio had their recital at the University. On STAGE with all of the other student's families and friends eyeballing her! Whereas I, her fraidy cat 40 year old mom would be unconscious, absent or projectile vomiting, she acknowledges that she's nervous and still wants to get on stage to entertain the crowd. When she started playing her song, she enthusiastically played (forte, right?) the first few notes from the wrong song. Instead of packing up her book and fleeing the stage, she laughed at herself, focused and began playing the right song...really well. So proud of her!

Earlier that day her basketball team had their first game of the season. They got skunked by this team (who I'm told has been together for 4 years!), 36-0. It was one of those hard to watch games with the grandparents yelling at the ref to give the kids a break while the parents are consoling each other and speculating on whether the taller 3 girls are over the age limit, etc, etc, etc. Emi didn't let that bum her out, she had fun and yes, it sucks to lose, but she and her team played well. This is the 2nd season they'd played together and the 2 star seasoned players they had last season, moved up (as I suspect those 3 girls on the opposing team should have) so they are just learning to be a team.

Fast forward 6 days to the 2nd basketball game. Sitting there in the stands (I know, that sounds weird to me too!) before the game Scott commented that he should have worked with Emi more on shooting. We worry that the girls will have their butts handed to them again and secretly size up the opponents. This is a new team and their male coaches are in suits and carrying clipboards. What is this the WNBA? Our lady coach leads our team by herself...she signed up last season to help and ended up becoming the coach. She gives the girls their pep talk after they warm up and the game begins. This new team isn't as skilled but they are hungry and they are the first to score a point. We get a little nervous but then our sweet little girl ("Baby Shaq" one player's daddy has dubbed her) gets the ball and tries to score: she shoots, she misses, she rebounds 4 more times until she finally scores! The crowd goes wild (ok so we were already a little wild). When my little girl looked up at us in the stands we definitely saw the eye of the tiger. This sort of behavior happened several more times and Scott told me that she got a "double-double" (double digit points and assists). Wow!

And to top it off, she scored the last point at the buzzer! My daughter rawks! On the way home from the game she talked about getting a scholarship in basketball. Now you're talking!